It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that’s enlightenment enough – to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.– Anthony Bourdain

Forty-five years ago, my parents uprooted our family from a comfortable existence in west Texas and moved to Peru, which at the time was in the middle of a military dictatorship. This was before the internet and Amazon, news and our usual comforts were hard to come by, and the heavily-armed police on every corner were a little disturbing. My sister and I weren’t exactly thrilled about leaving our friends and first world problems, nor did we appreciate seven years of visiting probably every nook and cranny in Latin America.

Now I am very, very thankful. The experience gave me a perspective of the world that has proven invaluable in life and my career, as well as a wanderlust that has led me to visit over 65 countries. I always encourage people to go overseas with their kids, even if just for a visit, as the experience is truly life-changing.

There were a lot of Americans in Peru at the time, thanks to the oil and copper industries, and we attended a large American school. I was on the swim team, which was often like a mini Olympics – we competed against the British, Japanese, and German schools. But we didn’t just hobnob with expats – my parents insisted that we spend a lot of time with typical Peruvians, at all levels of the socioeconomic scale. We’d take long trips on back roads through small villages, spend a Sunday afternoon tramping through a slum trying to find a furniture woodworker, and go to parties at the homes of dad’s local staff.

My wife and I have carried that concept with us when we travel – domestic and overseas. Instead of spending weeks planning how we’re going to hit all the tourist hot spots, we’ll often do a quick scan of a guide book on the plane over and perhaps a quick traditional tour the first day. Then we spend the rest of our time off the beaten path, trying to learn how typical people live. Yes, we miss a lot of museums, but I think we gain a more real understanding of the locale.

Some memories are truly special. We’ll always remember spending Christmas at an orphanage in Panama, sipping tea with villagers in the high mountains of Bhutan, touching old bullet holes in the walls of a new yoga studio in Bosnia-Herzegovina, visiting a hospital in Tanzania (that happens to apply lean principles – see the impromptu video series I filmed for Gemba Academy!), having a beer while listening to a concert in a small beach town in Cuba, and contemplating the incredible violence of years past while having a sunset drink at a café on the Mekong River in Laos.

The experiences change you. They are truly a gemba, as value is created there both for the local people and for us in terms of accurate perspectives on the world. Reality is often far different from what many people think it is, especially in the U.S. where so few people travel outside of the country, let alone continent. Sort of like running a factory from a conference room instead of visiting the shop floor.

The walls of our home are filled with photos of our travels, almost all with people. The old man in the photo above, taken in Dhulikhel outside of Kathmandu in Nepal, still haunts me. Take a moment and really look at the leathered skin, the tired eyes, and the gnarled hands. You can almost feel the extreme hardship he’s endured. When I face a struggle I remember people like him and realize, again, how blessed I am to have the pure luck to be born where I was.

The passing of Anthony Bourdain in early June impacted me more than the death of any other celebrity, perhaps because I don’t really watch mindless TV or keep up with celebrities. Bourdain was an exception. We shared his love of food and travel, and especially how he went out of his way to connect with the local culture.

Over eleven seasons his Parts Unknown series visited 100 locations. Oftentimes we had already been where he went and could relive the experience, but several times he added new places to our wanderlist.

Lots has been written on how Bourdain struggled with his own demons. Maybe that’s why Bourdain was able to connect with people, creating real understanding, empathy, and compassion. And that’s why my wife and I connected with Bourdain’s show. In his travels he found what we also seek when we explore the world: a true understanding of the lives of people.

We live in strange, dark times that often seem bereft of fellow-feeling. For many (me included), Bourdain was an ideal of how empathy and curiosity could be wielded against the world’s ignorance and fearfulness. He felt deeply. Now he’s gone, and we’re still here. We need to be people who feel things deeply. We need to interrogate our assumptions about the world and the strangers in it. We need to try to know each other.

Rest in peace, Anthony. Thanks for inspiring us to discover and connect with real people.

It’s that time of the year when we reflect on the past and plan for the future. An arbitrary time, which has always bothered me. We should really be doing this in a continual fashion. I try, with daily, monthly, and quarterly reflection, but I’ll admit that the end of the year is still a special time.

As is customary for us, my wife and I head off to a remote beach house for a couple weeks, which also lets us reconnect a bit. By the way, I’ve found that two solid weeks is really what’s required to appropriately decompress, relax, and reflect at the end of a year. Anything less and your mind is distracted by the logistics of travel, meal planning, and so forth. I need two weeks in a chair with a view, preferably with no people around. Ok, except my wife.

Overall it’s been a good year. I’ve gotten into the best shape I’ve been in in the past thirty years, we bought a house that we’re doing an extensive remodel on to turn into a “lean home,” I finally finished and published The Simple Leader, and I’ve been able to reinforce a more robust daily reflection practice.

I’ve also been successful at significantly reducing my travel, and for the first time in decades I will have no (zero!) status on any airline going into next year! Scary, but strangely liberating. The perks of United 1K and American Executive Platinum are simply not worth the intangible costs. Hello row 35!

Perhaps the goal I’m most satisfied with is reading – a lot more. Decades ago I used to devour books every couple days, but as the pressures of life and business took hold, the habit slipped. I still read a lot of blogs, online newspapers, the WSJ each morning, and so forth, but books are different. The length of books creates context and complexity, which leads to contemplation and personal growth. I believe it’s important to avoid becoming superficial in thought.

Last January I told you how my annual “do something different” goal for this year was to read a work of literature from a different culture each month. I’m happy to say I’ve been successful and it’s been a very rewarding experience. Here’s how it turned out:

The Kite Runner was easily my favorite, followed by Ivan Denisovich. Ceremony started out rather slow, but became an intriguing look at Native American society as well as the experiences of returning war veterans. Life and Death and Wind-Up Bird were interesting immersions into Chinese and Japanese life, although keeping track of the multiple reincarnations in Life and Death (some not as humans!) became a bit difficult.

While staring at the ocean the past couple weeks I’ve also cranked through several more books, but from a wider variety of genres.

As usual, Tim is a bit over the top in many areas, but there were also some really interesting nuggets of wisdom. The Language of God, The Book of Joy, and The Way of Silence are phenomenal books and highly recommended, regardless of your spiritual persuasion.

Several concepts from those books were great reflection points, such as the eight pillars of joy as described by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu: perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity.

Based on that I’ve come up with a plan for the upcoming year, continuing to reinforce daily practice. And I’ve also determined my new “do something different” goal. But this time I’m keeping it private, at least for now. A hint: it could involve extreme endurance. And I spent a lot of time on my “stop doing” list.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and productive new year. Take the time to slow down and reflect. What will you improve next year?

I recently came across the following TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie where she talks about the “danger of a single story.” From growing up as a kid in Nigeria to studying in the United States and into adulthood, she describes how both herself and others, having only heard a single story about a certain situation, critically misunderstand the person or circumstance.

We all experience the power of the single story, often without realizing the danger. How many of us get our news of the world, and thereby form opinions, from just a single news source? Or even worse, from news sources that we believe already reflect our opinions, thereby denying us the need to have to think about other perspectives, resulting in an increasingly polarizing form of confirmation bias?

How many of us as leaders simply listen to the single story told to us by our staffs, or perhaps even just a computer system – both of which may be predispositioned or programmed to conform to our existing perspective?

The single story may be an incomplete picture of the situation – or even dead wrong.

This is the power of genchi genbutsu – go and see. Go to the real place to truly understand.

My wife and I both lived overseas as kids, and experienced the danger of the single story when interacting with friends and family back home. Perspectives and opinions were sometimes just plain wrong. This is why we love to travel and have visited over 60 countries. With each new place we try to learn about and understand the overlapping tapestry of stories to get a true sense of the people and place, which is almost always very different from what we expected from the single story we’d read or heard about before visiting.

In Laos, one of the few remaining hardcore communist countries, we learned about the vibrant undercurrent of capitalism that has put a TV in the middle of many Hmong grass huts – often showing western shows such as [shudder] The Real Housewives of Orange County. In Tanzania we ventured outside the game parks that most tourists stick to to see how a group of dedicated people are fighting an incredible infant mortality problem – which was documented in a Gemba Academy video series. In Panama last Christmas we left the relaxing beaches and spent a day at a women’s shelter in the very dangerous city of Colon. We’ve been to the slums of India, animal rescue organizations in Nepal, broke bread with villagers in a small hill town in Italy, witnessed the social impact of an entire generation of men murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and walked through the vibrant township of Soweto outside the nearly abandoned and squatter-filled inner city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Every place has many stories.

That tapestry of multiple stories is the real picture. Not the single story that you read about in the paper or hear about on CNN, let alone entertainment channels like Fox or The Daily Show.

As leaders we must do the same. We can’t rely on a memo from our staff or a report from an MRP system. Those are single stories, and will invariably be an incomplete picture – or just wrong. Just as a single story can give us a potentially dangerous misunderstanding about geopolitical events, so can it about situations within our organizations.

Go and see. Observe, ask questions, challenge, and reflect. Learn the many stories to understand the true situation.